BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Submission Summary

Monitoring and Measuring Youth Resilience for improved programing: A case in Colombia

Sun, February 19, 2:45 to 4:15pm EST (2:45 to 4:15pm EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Independence Level (5B), Independence F

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The Colombian Youth Resilience Activity (CRYA), implemented by ADCI/VOCA, is UAID/Colombia’s first activity to focus entirely on youth. The activity empowers youth to become positive change agents in their communities and uses a holistic approach to change that involves families, schools, communities, public institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), faith-based organizations (FBOs), and the private sector. Youth Resilience provides opportunities to young people, between the ages of 10 to 20, facing the most risk, including migrants, former youth offenders, victims of gender-based violence, former child soldiers, and those vulnerable to forced recruitment by illegal armed actors. The activity is implemented in 30 urban and rural municipalities in Arauca, Antioquia, Atlántico, Bolívar, La Guajira, Caquetá, Chocó, Cundinamarca, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Valle del Cauca, Meta, and Cauca. It runs from December 2020 to November 2025.
CRYA serves three key objectives. The first key objective focuses on promoting and improving youth’s healthy relationships and networks. The second focuses on building and strengthening protective environments. The third is geared towards fostering and empowering youth’s economic opportunities. The activity has a final cross-cutting outcome, which is viewed as vital to the success of the program, strategic communications for social cohesion. All together the program engages various public and private, local and international partners to improve resiliency in youth across the priority areas.

In order for the program to understand the progress of resiliency and ensure effective activities, it had to develop a tool that met its needs by providing sufficient information to monitor and tailor activities for youth resiliency in Colombia. The program, in partnership with AIR, developed a psychometric self-assessment tool called the Youth Resilience Assessment Tool (YRAT). The pioneering tool is designed to assess a composite of several dimensions, including the individual, family, friend/peer group, school environment, and community where the youth live. Each of the dimensions include various protective and risk factors that contribute to youths’ overall resilience. The program serves three objectives.
Screening Tool. Identify or screen the level of resiliency amongst prospective youth beneficiaries living in different communities. As mentioned above, even in the most violent and impoverished communities, not all youth are vulnerable to engage in violent or delinquent activities. The tool seeks to identify the specific domains that contribute most strongly to resiliency amongst youth.
Personalization of programs according to the level of resiliency. The tool will help generate relevant information to plan interventions more adequately. The YRAT will enable the program to design interventions according to the levels of resiliency for each individual. Those who have lower levels of resiliency require additional support or more targeted interventions. Evidence from evaluations of different crime and violence prevention interventions has demonstrated that targeted interventions (at the secondary and tertiary levels) have higher degrees of effectiveness than interventions offered at the primary level.
Monitoring and Evaluation tool. The YRAT will serve to establish a baseline on the levels of resiliency amongst the targeted population and can be used to monitor and track progress overtime. To the extent that the YRAT is implemented at the end of an intervention, it can be used to assess whether the program contributed to increase the levels of resiliency, by how much and in which domains.

The YRAT is administered to youth (10-29 years of age) who volunteer to be part of the program and desire to develop an Individual Youth Resilience Plan. The tool has been applied to over 5,000 youth engaged in the activity and have demonstrated interest in participating in developing an Individual Youth Resilience Plan and a 9-15 month intervention. The YRAT is a criterion referenced assessment tool that evaluates against a set of pre-specified criteria. As opposed to other psychometric tools that compare individual results with the mean score of the group, the YRAT scores are assessed against criteria.

The YRAT serves a powerful assessment tool to identify the level of resilience of each participant in the program; to provide differentiated services according to their needs and the areas where they have weaker protective or risk factors, to monitor progress along time, and to evaluate the results of the program at the completion of program implementation.
This panel seeks to share the process of defining resilience in the Colombian context, the process of developing such a unique tool, the initial analysis and results, and how they will be used to tailor and adapt activities for effectiveness.

PRESENTATIONS:
Defining Youth Resilience in Colombia
Presenter: YEMILE Mizrahi; ymizrahipe@gmail.com (AIR)

Developing a practical and useful tool to measure youth resilience
Presenter: Mauricio Estrada Matute; mestrada-matute@air.org (AIR)

The Case of Colombia - A baseline assessment from the Youth Resilience Assessment Tool
Presenter: Enrique Maruri Londono (ACDI/VOCA)
Co-author or Non-Presenter: Ana Gonzalez; agonzalez@air.org

How can we use the tool to i mprove resilience programming for youth?
Presenter: Enrique Maruri Londono (ACDI/VOCA)

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations

Discussant